Development and validation of a questionnaire on the knowledge of tuberculosis and the perception of tuberculosis treatment among tuberculosis patients in Malaysia.

ABSTRACT

Background: A high level of awareness on tuberculosis (TB) is crucial for the success of the prevention and treatment among the high risk populations. Having a good perception about the treatment of TB may increase the acceptance of the control measures in decreasing the spread of the disease. Aims & Objective: To develop and validate a Questionnaire about the knowledge of the causes, mode of transmission, the prevention of TB and the perception of TB treatment among TB patients in Malaysia. Materials and Methods: A Cross-sectional study was conducted among TB patients attended the Respiratory Clinic at the Hospital Raja Perempuan Zainab II, Kelantan, Malaysia. This study used a self-administrated questionnaire that takes approximately 10 minutes to complete and was generally well received by the respondent’s. The validation involved content validity, exploratory factor analysis for the construct validity and internal consistency for reliability. Results: A total of seventy TB patients comprising of 39 males (55.7%) and 31 females (44.3%) responded. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy (KMO) was (0.827 and 0.723) and Bartlett's test of Sphericity was highly significant (P<0.001). The exploratory factor analysis was used with the extraction method of the principal component and the varimax rotation with normalization. The factor analysis showed six factors within the 28 items which were associated with TB knowledge, the cause and prevention, the mode of transmission and the perception of TB treatment. The internal consistency was [0.893, 0.552, 0.701 and 0.729] for the four factors of TB knowledge and [0.889 and, 0.697] 2 factors for the perception of TB treatment respectively. Conclusion: The questionnaire on TB knowledge, on the causes, the mode of transmission, and the prevention of TB and the perception of TB treatment was valid and reliable with good items that enables its use for assessing TB knowledge among TB patients and the community.